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A MANUAL 



FOR 



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1 



Home Teachers 



State Commission of Immigration and Housing 

of California, 




CALIFORNIA STATE PRINTING OFFICE 

SACRAMENTO 

1919 



44!*i 



PERSONNEL OF THE COMMISSION. 

Commissioners. 

SIMON J. LUBIN, President Sacramento 

MOST REV. E. J. HANNA, D.D., Vice President San Francisco 

MRS. FRANK A. GIBSON Dos Angeles 

J. H. McBRIDE, M.D Pasadena 

PAUL SCHARRENBERG, Secretary San Francisco 

GEORGE L. BELL, Attorney and Executive Officer. 

Offices of the Commission. 

main office: 

Underwood Building, 525 Market Street, San Francisco 

BRANCH OFFICES : 

526 Union League Building, Second and Hill Streets, Los Angeles. 

Rowell Building, Fresno. 

419 Forum Building, Sacramento. 

Council Chamber, City Hall, Stockton. 



B. •* &• 

APR 18 J9I9 



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Publications of the Commission of Immigration and Housing of California. 

1. Americanization — The California Program. 

2. Immigrant Education Leaflets, Numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. 

3. The Spirit of the Nation (Song Book). 

4. Patriotic Exercises (A Program). 

5. The Home Teacher Manual. 

6. A Discussion of Methods of Teaching English. 

7. A Primer for Foreign-speaking Women. Parts I and II. 

8. An A-B-C of Housing. 

9. A Plan for a Housing Survey. 

10. State Housing Manual. 

11. Camp Sanitation and Housing. 

12. Suggestions for Speakers. 

13. Heroes of Freedom. 

14. Fresno's Immigration Problem. 

These publications may be had free on application to the Commission. 



CONTENTS. 



LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL ag f 

CONDITIONS CREATING THE NEED 7 

DIFFICULTIES 13 

QUALIFICATIONS OF TEACHERS i 13 

AIMS 14 

METHODS 9 

SUGGESTIONS TO HOME TEACHERS 12 

SUGGESTIONS TO BOARDS OF EDUCATION 15 

EQUIPMENT : 15 

HOW TO PROCURE HOME TEACHERS 17 

CO-OPERATIVE AGENCIES 17 

RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED 18 

PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE AND TESTIMONY 19 

HOME TEACHER ACT 47 



LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. 



To His Excellency, William D. Stephens, 

Governor of California. 

Sir: We have the honor to submit herewith a pamphlet entitled 
"A Manual for Home Teachers." 

It is issued to provide answers to the frequent questions coming to 
the Commission from all parts of California, and from many states of 
the Union. 

The pamphlet is based upon the practical experiences of pioneer 
Home Teachers, and furnishes the best guide now available to those 
desiring to begin the work of a Home Teacher. 

It has been compiled and prepared by Mrs. H. K. W. Bent, of the 
Commission's Bureau of Education. 
Respectfully yours, 

Commission op Immigration and Housing 
op California. 



TO HOME TEACHERS. 

After watching the working out of the Home Teacher law for four 
years, those who have its interests most closely at heart have found that 
there is one grave error into which the Home Teacher is very likely 
to fall. 

The law definitely makes the Home Teacher a part of the school 
system and, moreover, specifies that she be connected with certain 
schools. Under that law she is as thoroughly responsible to her prin- 
cipal as are the teachers whose work lies in the schoolroom. 

It is very easy, however, to take another attitude. Although the 
school is coming into its own as the social center of its district, social 
and educational fields are still generally held to be distinct. And 
because the Home Teacher is definitely a socializing element, she often 
slips away from the school, and either affiliates herself with other social 
agencies or tries to do her task alone. 

Both of these methods have invariably proven fatal to the success of 
the work. Only when a Home Teacher is the definite link between the 
school and the home can she hope to succeed, and it is as an envoy of 
the school that she can best enter the home with no risk of being the 
intruder. Working apart from the school leads to working at cross 
purposes with it and leads, besides, to conflict and overlapping with 
other agencies. 

To be sure, those agencies must know her. Every organization 
which is bent on helping those who are in need of help must feel her 
eo-operation. But that co-operation must come in the name of the 
institution which she represents. 

The future of the nation is largely in the hands of the teachers. To 
the Home Teacher belongs, in ever increasing measure, the future of 
many of the homes. And as the welfare of the children can not be con- 
sidered apart from the welfare of the homes, so the Home Teacher can 
not break away from the school and hope to fill the place for which she 
has been chosen. 

So we come to the definition of that place. ' ' The teaching of English 
to the adult foreign born," in the words of Mrs. Edith Perry Bremer, 
"is 20 per cent a problem of the educational, and 80 per cent the 
problem of the social worker." So, likewise, is the teaching of right 
living to both foreign born and native born mainly a social problem. 
And thus the Home Teacher becomes the social worker of the school 
and as long as she holds that definition clearly in mind, there are no 
limits to the field of her endeavor. 



CONDITIONS CREATING THE NEED. 

In the earlier part of the heavy immigration to this country, we made 
the mistake of assuming that when the children were cared for in 
the public schools, our whole duty was done; that the older genera- 
tion was quite hopeless. We did not see the gravity of having a con- 
siderable and increasing fraction of our population made up of men 
who lived in colonies as essentially foreign as the countries from which 
they came, knowing only such English as was forced on them by their 
labor; of women with no knowledge of the language or of any other 
feature of the new life, timid and distrustful, bewildered by losing 
their old surroundings, and dulled by failure to understand the new. 

Another result of our lack of comprehension was as natural as it was 
un] coked for — the children, acquiring English and the customs of the 
country, fancied themselves superior to their parents, and began to 
ridicule them, and to break from their authority. This attacked the 
solidarity of the family, which among immigrants is particularly strong. 
Few will question the gravity of this condition, attested by the rapidly 
rising rate of delinquency — or the soundness of the following observa- 
tion hy one exceptionally familiar with the situation: "The basis of 
every worth-while civilization the world has known, and the hope of 
America, is to be found in the family. The genuine culture of any 
people may be measured by its estimate of the family. If that be low, 
then there is no lasting culture; if that be high, then there is the 
groundwork for permanence. Whatever tends to disrupt the family 
makes for anarchy — whatever tends to preserve it makes for perma- 
nence. That which tends to break down respect for parents, tends 
to root out all reverence." 

Seeing these children of the second generation throwing aside respect 
not only for parents, but for law and for the rights of others, public 
sentiment became aroused, and gradually came to realize that they 
must be reached through the mothers, who had scarcely been touched 
by the night schools, which were beginning to reach the men. The 
foreign women were shy, unaccustomed to initiative or mental effort, 
and must — in any case — remain with their children at night. For a 
long time this seemed the end of a blind alley, but those with political 
and social sense pressed on to find an outlet, urged by the consciousness 
that a community can not rise greatly above its mothers, and also that 
a state is unsafe, when in a large part of its homes there is no knowledge 
of its language or the ideas for which it stands. In states like Cali- 
fornia, where women have the suffrage, there was another danger. 
The present law gives the wife the nationality of her husband, and 
when the man was naturalized, the woman, however ignorant, could 
vote. 



8 A MANUAL FOE HOME TEACHERS. 

Light began to come with the thought that if the women could not 
come to find knowledge, then knowledge should go to find them. Almost 
at once there followed the recognition of the fact that we had the means 
ready at hand — the public school, that university of every neighbor- 
hood, could be a ready way of approach — the school, which was the one 
American thing which these bewildered strangers knew and trusted. 

Conscientious teachers began to add to their day's labor hours of 
visiting in the homes of their pupils, seeking to establish points of 
contact. This could not continue, in justice to their regular work, 
but the idea had been found. There must be a woman, definitely a 
part of the school system, with its prestige and backing, whose duty 
should be, not to teach children in a schoolroom what they need to 
know, but to teach mothers in homes, and in schools, what they need to 
know. This conviction created the California law, authorizing the 
employment of a "Home Teacher" for any school having 500 units of 
daily attendance. The provisions of the law at present limit its appli- 
cation to congested neighborhoods, so that the foreign home is chiefly 
the field of the Home Teacher, and she becomes a direct Americanizing 
influence. 

The interpretation of the need in California departs from that con- 
ceived elsewhere. There have been so-called Home Teachers in a dozen 
cities of several Eastern states, for a number of years, but their purpose 
is to do follow-up work for absent, irregular, subnormal or incorrigible 
children, and they are more properly visiting teachers. The Home 
Teacher, as we conceive her purpose, seeks not primarily the special 
child — though that will often open the door to her, and afford her a 
quick opportunity for friendly help — but the home as such, and espe- 
cially the mother who makes it. This discrimination as to aim and 
purpose can not be too much emphasized, or too consistently maintained, 
for the care of abnormal children, important as it is, can by no means 
take the place of the endeavor to Americanize the families of the 
community. 

Into the midst of these beginnings and experiments dropped the 
tremendous testing of the nation by war — the one test which we had 
assumed could never come. Suddenly, over night, as it seemed, the 
nation had joined the social workers, and become conscious of the aliens. 
"Would their loyalty be with us, or overseas?" Germany thought she 
knew. We were one-third alien, and she was confident we could not 
overcome such a handicap — that our strength would be a rope of sand. 
We know what happened — how aliens and American-born alike fought 
under our flag. But not because we had been careful to teach them the 
principles we believed were worth fighting for. We had been indiffer- 
ent, we had left them to struggle against almost impossible conditions, 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 9 

and their loyalty was more than we deserved. But the ideals of liberty 
which they had brought with them still burned in their hearts, and they 
are naturally docile and law-abiding, so when they were called they 
went, as the service flags in the humble windows touchingly testify. 

To the uncomprehending women suddenly left alone with their little 
ones, we owe in honor an added and peculiar duty — to prepare them 
against the day when their soldier men shall come back to them, 
marvelously developed by their experiences, with a knowledge of better 
living, of clean air and good food, of regular habits and recreation, as 
well as some glimpses, at least, of wide world thinking and ideas. This 
army of ours, the most wonderful the world has ever seen, has done 
genuine social work for its soldiers. In fairness to them, we also must 
do social work for "the girls they left behind them," that these 
men who fought beside our own sons may find homes worth fighting for 
and worth returning to. 

The country is awake at last — from all sides comes now the demand 
that those who live in America shall understand America — that this is 
"a critical issue between the United States and destiny." We can not 
do in a day what we should have been doing for many years, but we 
see now our task, and have perceived the means to accomplish it. The 
family must be considered the unit, and to each part of it must be given 
the opportunity adapted to it, until each is fitted to make a place in 
society as an independent individual. 



METHODS OF HOME TEACHERS.* 

The Teacher will first seek entrance into the homes, where the work 
can better be done in the native tongue, as the early knowledge of 
English will be far too elementary to be of use for the intimate and 
personal approach needed there. Some of the best work, especially in 
establishing a friendly connection, is in the individual homes, and the 
visits of the Teacher furnish an incentive for improvement in their care. 
Yet much can be taught in a group of women which could not be taught 
them separately, and one of their great needs is to break out of their 
isolation and come in contact with others. The group work, therefore, 
as fast as it can be built up, is of great value. When practicable there 
should be at first a separate group for each national^, and the instruc- 
tion should, as far as possible, be altogether in English. A prime need 
of the women is to learn to speak English — the reading and writing can 
well wait until later. It can be taught directly, and even better 
indirectly, through the objects and processes used in work, which should 
always be connected with their daily life. 



*For detailed methods, see page 25. 

2 44HSG 



10 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

The women in these groups can be given the opportunity for self- 
expression, and especially social self-expression, the lack of which is so 
deadening and so dangerous. 

Here, too, can be instilled the elements of American customs and 
laws, which they often transgress only because they do not know them, 
and have had no opportunity to know them. 

The Home Teacher needs to keep in mind the modern educational 
recognition of the essential place of recreation in every life, and 
nowhere can it be more important than in the lives of these women, 
which are monotonous and uneventful to a degree more complete than 
those more favored can imagine. Ways should be sought to vary 
the work with simple pleasures and diversions. These are of especial 
value when linked, like the other work, with the school. It is whole- 
some for the children to see that their mothers are included in such 
plans and privileges. 

It is an indication of achievement of the highest sort when these 
people, whose vision has been confined to their own four walls, can be 
brought out of the attitude of receiving, into the joy of giving. Perhaps 
no happier women could have been found during the war than certain 
groups of Italian women in California, very poor and very hardworking, 
who were sewing for the Ked Cross. The best methods will seek, even 
as a distant goal, the highest kind of results. 

The psychological law that it is possible to proceed to the unknown 
only through the known must be regarded. "Even if the old were all 
bad and the new all good," we must still engraft the new upon the 
original stock, rather than uproot the mental product of generations. 



METHODS OF HOME TEACHERS. 
A. In Homes. 

1. Never enter a home without invitation. At first you should have a 
definite errand from the school. 

2. Establish your connection with the school, and from this build up 
a friendly relation. 

3. Looking after attendance, while not your first business, is impor- 
tant in itself, and valuable in giving you access to the mother. 

4. Be willing to advance slowly. 

5. Be prepared to meet sudden trouble until response can be had 
from social agencies. 

6. Be chary of gifts. The women should know two things — one that 
you will not let them suffer in a temporary emergency; and the other 
that it is quite useless to attempt to take advantage of you. 



COMMISSION OP IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 11 

7. Be ready with sympathy and help in any kind of sorrow or trouble. 

8. As soon as your place is secure, begin to suggest and bring about 
improvements in the care of the house and the children. When you 
are allowed to help bathe the baby, you can teach many things by that 
means. The work requires constant ingenuity and tact,* and patient 
follow-up work. Use a minimum of criticism and a maximum of praise. 

B. In Groups. 

1. Advantages of group teaching. 

a. Conservation of time. 

b. Multiplication of effort. 

c. Encouragement of numbers. 

d. Freedom from embarrassment. 

e. Enthusiasm of concert work. 

f. Difficult suggestions can be made without offense. 

g. Advantage of seeing different and better things away from 

home. 

2. To secure a group, begin by inviting a few, and make the occasion 
particularly attractive. Increase the number by repeated visits, and 
by inducing those who come to invite others. 

3. Make the speaking of English a constant aim. Use it yourself, 
and teach it in connection with all work.f 

4. Begin with whatever occupation interests most. Almost any 
woman is pleased to sew for the baby. 

5. Avail yourself of the services of any special teachers in the school — 
for sewing, cooking, handcraft, music, etc. Also, as your groups 
multiply, of volunteer helpers from the various social organizations, 
churches, etc. 

6. Use every available means to make the meeting place attractive, 
in simple ways which can be copied at home. 

7. Encourage imitation of pleasant and wholesome things. In some 
cases marked improvement has appeared in the home with no criticism 
whatever. One woman gazed around the room in wonder, saying over 
and over again, ' ' This is so clean ! ' ' 

8. Observe public holidays, with trifling souvenirs, as cards or nags 
or flowers, increasing the sense of doing as other Americans do. 

9. Make use of all practicable recreation — music, parties, entertain- 
ments, parks, etc., remembering how limited and dull are the lives in 
these homes, and that the need for diversion is as natural as hunger to 



♦"What a lot of clothes to be washed! Perhaps you have no soap. I will bring 
you some." "How clean your kitchen looks today ! I will bring you some flowers 
this afternoon." "Don't you want to make your house nice for Christmas? I will 
come tomorrow and see it." 

fHelps may be had at this office. 



12 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

every normal human creature. Since we have found how largely the 
health and morale of the army men was sustained by wholesome and 
suitable recreation, we shall not be likely to ignore its essential character 
for all kinds of people. Especially seek to make for the women a place 
in the school entertainments. Though at first diffident and uncompre- 
hending, they will come to enter into the spirit, and not only find much 
happiness, but receive many a lesson in Americanism. From the 
schools, with their flag salutes and flag drills, charts and songs, they 
will constantly and unconsciously imbibe real patriotism. 



SUGGESTIONS TO HOME TEACHERS. 

1. Constantly emphasize the school, the stable link connecting your 
neighborhood with the larger community. At every place ask yourself, 
"Whom in this house can I connect with the school in any way, even 
through the nursery or a fiesta?" 

2. Use care in approach — take advantage of errands, especially for 
the school. 

3. Make friendliness first — all else can wait, and nothing can be 
done without it. 

4. Never take visitors with you, to observe either your people or 
your methods. 

5. Remember you are not primarily a nurse or a relief agent — their 
work is to restore, yours to construct. 

6. Become familar with the social agencies, that you may know 
where to refer their especial work promptly.* 

7. Use your visits and influence to induce the fathers to attend night 
school. 

8. Avoid — 

a. Showing red tape — making records, etc. 
5. Taking sides in neighborhood quarrels. 

c. Assuming too much responsibility. 

d. Talking religion or politics. 

9. Watch for opportunities to introduce American customs — "in 
America we do it so. " 

10. Seek always something to praise. 

11. Recognize the excellencies in the old life from which your people 
come. 

12. While you will supplement the work of other social agents — as the 
Nurse and Attendance Officer — let everything be tributary to your 
main purpose, never to be lost sight of, to broaden, elevate and Ameri- 
canize the viewpoint and life of the homes which you enter. 



♦See list on page 46. 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 13 

DIFFICULTIES. 

No new development of public service, particularly in the educational 
field, can take place easily. The kindergarten and even cooking and 
sewing schools had to fight for their places which now seem so well 
established. The Home Teacher plan is no exception. 

The intrinsic and positive difficulties may be left to the teacher in 
the field, when she is once secured. The difficulties in the way of estab- 
lishing the department are chiefly negative — the lack of public informa- 
tion, of money, and of qualified teachers. If the first can be met, the 
others will follow. 



QUALIFICATIONS FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

The work of a Home Teacher is highly specialized. It is a new 
profession and requires special qualifications. The Home Teacher must 
comprehend the object of the work, and the reasons which called it into 
being. She must understand that so delicate a matter as assuming to 
enter homes and modify them will require constant and unfailing tact, 
and respect for the rights and dignity of any Avoman in her own home. 
She will need to recognize that in the nature of the case her task is 
difficult — that it is because it is difficult that she is needed — and that 
therefore a part of her equipment must be patience, optimism, and the 
ability to turn to good account all the varying circumstances she will 
meet. 

It is useless for her to enter upon the work at all unless she really 
cares for the people, can enter into their joys and sorrows, and rejoice 
to bring them friendship and inspiration. 

Qualifications. A Summary. 

1. Teacher's certificate. 

2. Experience in teaching and in social work. 

3. Good health. 

4. Ability to speak the language of the largest group in the district. 

5. Complete loyalty to the principal of the school. 

6. Tact and patience for a delicate task. 

7. Ingenuity in adapting all circumstances to the main purpose. 

8. An incapacity for discouragement. 

9. Comprehension of the reasons and objects of the work. 

10. Finally, above all and through all, a sympathetic attitude toward 
the people, which involves some knowledge of the countries and con- 
ditions from which they came, and what "America" has meant to them. 



14 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

AIMS OF THE HOME TEACHER. 

The Home Teacher, like other workers, can not have her aims and 
purposes too clearly outlined, or too constantly in mind. The under- 
lying aims are of the broadest. 

The emphasis of effort must be shifted from the child to the parent, 
and the home made the working unit. 

There must be a distinct effort to keep the mother honored by the 
children. A help to this end is the explanation and interpretation, 
to both, of the Compulsory School Law, which often sadly perplexes 
the parents, and encourages the children to feel that the parents' 
authority is not supreme. Both should be led to confidence in the school 
as the source of friendliness and help. Later, when they have absorbed 
some ideas of democracy, they can be brought to understand that the 
school is theirs because it belongs to all and is supported by all. 

"While specific matters of health, etc., will need to receive attention, 
the important thing is gradually to raise the standards of the home. 
It must always be borne in mind that the women are following — just as 
we are — the manner of life they have always seen and known. They 
have neither knowledge nor example to suggest anything different, and 
the different way may not at first seem better. 

Aims. A Summary. 

1. To make the home the unit of the community, with special emphasis 
on the mother. 

2. To link up home and school. "I am the school, coming to this 
home." 

3. To reach — 

a. Families with children in school. 

o. Families with young children. 

c. Other community work if practicable. 

4. To improve the ideas of sanitation and personal hygiene — suggest- 
ing, for instance, that sausage and coffee are not the best diet for a 
young baby. 

5. Especially to raise the standards of the home. The children accept 
as part of the course of nature that the school should be clean and the 
home dirty. 

6. To keep the mother honored by her children. 

7. To enlarge gradually blind acceptance of the school to civic under- 
standing of it. "We, the people of the city, do this." 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 15 

SUGGESTIONS TO BOARDS OF EDUCATION. 

1. The public requires education in the importance of this work, and 
in a sympathetic understanding of the difficulties of the alien. Children 
spend a few hours in the school, and many in the home, and public 
interest must be cultivated to include the larger need. 

2. Familiarity with the situation shows that the Home Teacher sup- 
plements and multiplies the effectiveness of the school in many ways. 
In the effort, for instance, to inculcate personal cleanliness, a child is 
bathed at school, but if he goes back to an unclean house, with vermin 
for bedfellows, he must return to the school to be served again and 
again. When in a schoolroom of twenty pupils, fifteen must have their 
heads cleaned, it is manifestly the homes that need attention. 

3. Methods for the new work of Home Teaching must be worked out 
on the field, and not in an office. 

4. Normal schools, upon request from responsible bodies, would 
undoubtedly begin to recognize in their training this virtually new 
profession. 

5. Certain equipment and supplies are required by the Home Teacher 
in order to introduce to her people the better and safer civilization which 
the community needs they should acquire. 

6. Experience has shown that in certain localities a Home Teacher's 
school serves its community best when open both forenoon and afternoon, 
that the women may come when their family cares make it possible. 

7. One of the qualifications of a school principal in a congested 
district should be the social sense, and a degree of social knowledge, 
that she may sympathetically co-operate with the Home Teacher who 
may be put into her field. 

8. Teachers showing the peculiar qualities needed for home work 
should have early recognition, and be encouraged to give their attention 
to this branch of their profession, for the Home Teacher must usually 
be evolved on the field. She can not be created by resolution, nor can 
she at present be imported. 



EQUIPMENT FOR THE HOME TEACHER. 

It would be as unreasonable to expect a Home Teacher to do good 
work without adequate equipment as to expect it of any other teacher. 
In either case, it is true, the person and the method are more important 
than anything else can be, but even the best workman does better work 
with suitable tools. 



16 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

These foreign women know little of good patterns or skillful cutting, 
but respond to the charm of a well-fitting garment which they have 
themselves been helped to make from material at the school. Sometimes 
their homes are strangers to the unifying influence of a family meal, 
neatly served and eaten together. But from an orderly table at the 
school, with a white cloth, bright flowers and wholesome food, all of 
which they have helped to prepare, the women will learn easily and 
happily what no abstract teaching could ever give them. The hot 
water and soap, the white towels and shining dishes which they use in 
the school kitchen are silent teachers of home hygiene whose force and 
value can not be spared. 

While it is well to begin the Home Teacher's work even at a dis- 
advantage, yet it is wasteful of the teacher's strength and devotion to 
deny her ample equipment. One teacher said : " It isn 't fair to expect 
me to do this difficult work with bare hands. ' ' 

Equipment. A Summary. 

1. A school principal thoroughly in sympathy with the plan, and 
ready to co-operate in every way. One of antagonistic ideas would 
make work practically impossible. 

2. Suitable rooms at the schoolhouse, or near-by, for group teaching — 
a model flat or cottage if possible. They should be furnished for sew- 
ing, and for cooking and serving meals, and should be made attractive, 
but very simple, that the women may copy at home. 

3. Laundry facilities provided in the school yard will make it possible 
to teach improved methods, which for economy of time, strength and 
fuel, these women need especially to know. 

4. Some provision for caring for the babies while their mothers are 
in classes. If there is no school nursery, volunteer help may be pro- 
vided. 

5. Material from some source to be used in sewing and cooking. 
Coming through the school it does not pauperize. The Home Teacher 
will almost certainly be able to enlist the interest of some private organ- 
ization for this purpose. The material should be of the most simple 
and practical kind — outing flannel for the baby garments, and inexpen- 
sive goods for the children's dresses. Quite small remnants and pieces 
can be utilized by a resourceful teacher to make comfortable little 
garments, and show the women ways of thrift. For the highly prized 
quilts, to meet the constant need for bedding, there is required, in 
addition to the pieces for covering, the cotton for filling, which few of 
the women can buy, and which the teachers should not be left to supply 
personally, as they have too often done in the past. 

6. Charts and pictures and cards, with some provision for making 
additional ones. 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 17 

HOW TO PROCURE HOME TEACHERS. 

This is at present a serious question. There is no regular training 
for Home Teachers in the normal schools, and therefore there are no 
centres from which they may be drawn as needed. When the day of 
beginnings is past, and methods are standardized, then training will be 
given and teachers can be secured in the usual way. But at present 
each community must create its own — like other creations, they must 
be evolved. Places which are interested in having Home Teachers for 
their congested districts must keenly observe their regular teachers, 
with reference to their natural fitness for the new work. Even more 
than for the usual teaching, they must be born, not made. In general, 
look for a woman who has the social instinct, with a personal approach 
which attracts, and invites confidence. She should have a natural, 
honest respect for the personality of others, independent of their cir- 
cumstances, and no tendency to condescend to any one. She must have 
"a heart at leisure from itself," that genuinely warms to human joy 
and sorrow, with an irresistible sympathetic impulse toward friendly 
help, which is in no danger of perfunctory service. 

AVhen such a woman is found, let her be urged to turn her attention 
to this opening work, and prepare herself, as far as present facilities 
permit, to enter upon it. It is assumed that any board of education 
will be more than ready to employ her, and she can join the other 
pioneers in this wide new field of Americanizing the homes of our 
citizens of tomorrow. 



CO-OPERATING AGENCIES. 

It seems certain that work backed by the Board of Education, and 
understood to be definitely connected with the schools, has a peculiar 
and permanent value, partly because of its authority, stability and 
unity, and especially, because it partakes in no degree of charity. Yet 
there are agencies which have long been doing pioneer work in the 
field of home service, proving its value, as almost all work must be 
proved for the public, by private initiative. To them belongs the 
honor of the early vision which saw that the only way to bring these 
strangers into larger and better living was to show them such living, 
incarnated in those who have known it. Such agencies are the Settle- 
ments, the Y. W. C. A., The Council of Jewish \Yomen, the D. A. R., the 
Mothers Congress and Parent-Teachers Association, and other activities, 
both private and municipal. These agencies are all working for patri- 
otism, and trying to bring the foreign woman into a real American 

3—44."^, 



18 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

atmosphere, but they have not had the advantage of a vital link with 
the community itself. Such a link the Home Teacher affords. A con- 
nection with the schools can vitalize and stabilize the independent 
agencies, while they, in turn, can furnish things much needed by the 
Home Teacher, such as volunteer helpers for her group work — which 
just in proportion to her success she requires. Especially they help 
keep her view fresh and unformal. 

From both points of view, nothing is more desirable than the most 
complete and cordial co-operation between the Home Teacher and all 
agencies in the field. 



RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED. 

The results of home work are not swift or spectacular, but they are 
in wholesome and vital directions, and they are results which can not 
be secured in any other way. 

1. A restored balance of family authority, with its command once 
more in the hands of the parents. 

2. A more intelligent response to the demands of society. 

3. Improved morals and gentler manners in our citizens of tomorrow. 

4. Better standards of sanitation and health in foreign neighborhoods, 
tending to conserve the safety of the larger community. 

5. A wider horizon, and therefore increased happiness, for a large 
body of our people — those who have come to us hoping for the best 
things. 

6. An increased knowledge of what "America" means, and of the 
duties and responsibilities of its people. 

7. If the teacher be wise and large minded, she can not only help 
the alien to absorb what we have to give, but can bring back to us a fund 
of knowledge concerning him, and open a channel for what he and his 
civilization have to offer us. 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 19 



PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE AND PERSONAL 

TESTIMONY. 



1. FOREWORD. 

While the Home Teacher plan is in its early stages, and its methods 
are not yet completely standardized, it by no means entirely lacks 
practical demonstration. There were ten Home Teachers last year in 
various cities of California — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, 
Ontario and South Pasadena — and others have begun work this school 
year in Oakland, in Tulare County, and in Santa Barbara, until there 
are now in the field twenty official Home Teachers.* 

While perhaps no one of these has united every qualification for ideal 
work, some of them have had conspicuous success. Extracts from a few 
of their reports,! and outlines of parts of their work, are appended, 
for the suggestions they may offer. 

Suggestive matter from other sources is added. 



*Much practical Home Teacher work is being done under other names, both by 
teachers and by outside social workers. Reports of work not previously reported will 
be greatly appreciated by this office, to centralize the knowledge of the progress of 
this part of the Americanization problem. 

fThe Los Angeles articles are working - reports, made in the course of ordinary 
routine, to Miss Ruby Baughman, Supervisor of Immigrant Education for the City of 
Los Angeles. 



20 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

2. A PRACTICAL PROGRAM FOR THE HOME TEACHER. 

By Mrs. Amanda Chase, at the end of her first year's work. (Republished. ) 

I am asked to set forth some clear and definite working plans based 
on my own experiences, suggesting how Home Teachers may inaugurate 
their activities in assigned neighborhoods. 

To begin with, if you are a newly-appointed Home Teacher, I would 
advise you to spend your first week at the school house. The reasons 
are several. 

The school is the center from which you work. Your relations with 
the Principal are supremely important, for you are practically her 
outside assistant, her neighborhood deputy. It is necessary that you 
and she understand each other thoroughly. It is highly desirable that 
you agree on matters of neighborhood policy. At the last analysis, 
however, there can be but one head to the school district, and that is the 
Principal. Wherever you two think differently and you can not con- 
vince her, you are the one who must give way. She will be very busy 
that first week of school, and only by staying close can you really make 
her acquaintance. 

You need also to know the grade teachers, and to have them under- 
stand your place in the system. Later your work will touch theirs in 
many places. 

Also, this first week of school you will learn more of the neighborhood 
by staying at the schoolhouse than by outside calls. You can visit the 
schoolrooms, and be presented to the children as the teacher who has 
come to be a friend to all their mothers. You will meet numbers of 
mothers in the principal's office, entering their children. By Friday 
afternoon you will be identified with the school in the minds of some 
portion of the district, and that is what you want, for from the school 
the people expect both kindness and authority. You are the unknown, 
and the school is your backing. 

The second week you can begin the actual visiting. It is best to go 
first on definite errands from the school. There are always odds and 
ends of attendance to be looked up, even though truant officers are 
handling truancy and obdurate parents. 

Don't force your way in the least. When you say that you are from 
the school you will usually be invited in, and can turn the errand into a 
friendly visit. But in case you are not invited to enter, deliver your 
message at the door, as if that were all you had expected to do, and move 
on. That door and all the other doors will open to you in good time. 

Begin now to organize mothers' classes to meet afternoons at the 
schoolhouse. This group work is absolutely necessary in order to cover 
the ground efficiently, and also because of the outlook and inspiration 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 21 

for the mothers. They get much more by object lessons — by seeing a 
model flat or cottage — than they can in any other way. 

I would suggest forming -classes from the leading nationalities, each 
class to meet two afternoons a week. One afternoon the program can be 
an English lesson followed by cooking, cleaning or laundry. The other 
afternoon the program might comprise English followed by sewing, 
mending, weaving, or similar handcraft instruction. Sanitation, includ- 
ing personal hygiene, and patriotic teaching should be kept in mind. 
Sanitation may be given as part of the subject matter of English lessons, 
and also is closely bound up with the manual work. Patriotism and 
simple lessons on government are part of English teaching. Sanitation 
may be made vivid with posters such as are used in welfare conventions. 

The teaching of songs is a useful and much-enjoyed part of this 
group instruction. 

Any school needing a Home Teacher will probably have suitable 
equipment for the manual teaching. To hold these mothers' classes in 
a primary grade room after school, with a disturbed janitor hovering 
about, anxious to sweep, is something to be endured only as a temporary 
expedient. If the board of education can not furnish place and mate- 
rials, see if some wide-awake woman's club or other organization will not 
equip a little housekeeping center at the schoolhouse or close by. 

In connection with handcraft teaching, find out if your district has 
not some latent talents, some old-world arts already mastered, which may 
be turned to its practical commercial benefit. Often the skill is there — 
only obscured by badly chosen materials and models. 

The sessions may be about two hours long. 

The babies must be made welcome, as the mothers usually can not 
attend without them. I have sometimes had more babies present than 
women. If the school has a day nursery, they may be cared for during 
the lesson, if not, a volunteer helper would be most useful for this 
purpose. 

Visit any member who docs not attend for two successive lessons, to 
find out what the matter is; but don't make a practice of dropping 
around on lesson day to remind them. It isn't dignified, and they 
would come to depend on it unduly. And withal, the attendance is 
bound to be irregular. 

I have had in my class record book this year the names of about half 
as many Mexican women as there are Mexican families in the district, 
but a third of them moved into other districts. Of course, when condi- 
tions are ideal, such movers will be transferred to other Home Teachers, 
just as children are transferred to the same grade in another school. A 
third of those remaining are out at present on account of very young 
babies or other causes, but still consider themselves belonging to the 



22 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

class. Of the supposedly active members there are always a number 
absent. There is nothing to do about it but take heart of grace and 
keep on trying. 

Measure your success in group attendance by the ratio between your 
class and the number of women of that nationality in your neighbor- 
hood. For instance, do not be satisfied to say, "I have a class of forty 
Mexican women," if there are 160 Mexican families in your district. 
Say rather, "Thus far I have reached only a fourth of my potential 
members for this class. What can I do to secure the attendance of the 
other three-fourths ? ' ' 

At the same time that you are talking afternoon classes for the 
mothers, talk evening school for the fathers. If you drop round and 
visit the evening school yourself sometimes, it will help. 

When any considerable part of the district responds to the educa- 
tional advantages offered at the school, it will be impossible for you to 
do all the teaching in all the groups, even supposing that your talents 
are sufficiently diverse. Assistance may come in two ways: from the 
regular class and special teachers, or from volunteers outside the school. 
The teachers will be more dependable in attendance, but the volunteers 
will bring a buoyancy and freshness of enthusiasm rarely possible to 
the regulars already jaded by the day's work. There are splendid 
women in every community actually eager for social service oppor- 
tunities, and it is surely as worthy to serve the state as to work for 
churches and private philanthropies. Very likely you will find assist- 
ants of both sorts, but the volunteers particularly must be chosen 
with the greatest discretion, and you must keep a firm hand over 
their activities. They must not rush into the district visiting, though 
they might make an occasional call at the earnest spontaneous invitation 
of the pupil visited. 

Every forenoon will be spent in the homes. After all, the classes 
will only be islands in the sea of your visiting. You must visit to form 
the classes and visit to hold them. You must visit to see that the 
knowledge absorbed at school is actually put into practice at the home. 
You must visit to talk over many matters too delicate and personal to 
be taken up on class afternoons. 

Each class should have a social function about once a month. Have 
music, games, good times of various sorts. Always have refreshments. 
Along with these features manage each time to have the class show off 
their English and other accomplishments. 

Make yourself loved just as if you had moved into a new town where 
you wished to be a social success, or as if you were a new minister, just 
come to the parish. Your situation is somewhat similar to both, and the 



COMMISSION OP IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 23 

affection of the neighborhood is a big asset for your success in Ameri- 
canizing it. Foreigners, just like ourselves, are easier to lead than to 
drive into new ways. Give the district your genuine, earnest friend- 
ship — just the kind you give anybody. 

Get acquainted with all the social agencies in your city which touch 
your district, and do this as soon as possible. 

Home Teaching is a game of co-operation with everything else in the 
universe that is trying to help. You will find many families too sub- 
merged by sickness, nonemployment and various ills for any education 
to be possible until these conditions are ameliorated. If you undertake 
the amelioration yourself, you will lose sight of your own work in 
attempting what belongs to some one else. You must make the connec- 
tion between the family and the proper social agencies and move along 
with your own task. 

You need these social agencies to do the things which you can not, 
and likewise they need you to do the things which they can not. They 
need you for your intimate, first-hand, family-by-family knowledge of 
your district. Your territory is usually a mere square in the checker- 
board of their larger area. What charity visitor has time to stop and 
reconstruct a pauperized family? She must leave that to you. The 
Housing Commission may move people into better houses, but what is 
the use if they take their slum housekeeping along? The Commission 
will depend on you to educate these folks up to their new dwellings. 
And so on through the list. You may meet some slight criticism and 
opposition at first from the representatives of these other agencies, but 
only until they understand your place in the general scheme. Use tact 
and patience in showing them that your missions do not overlap. 

You will have a bothersome string of perplexities over the question 
' ' to give or not to give. ' ' Gladly do I share with you such philosophy 
as I have achieved on the subject. To begin with, all substantial aid 
had best come through the standard organized agencies. In addition, 
our school keeps a little storeroom of groceries and another of cloth- 
ing — both contributed by schools in more prosperous sections of the city. 
I draw on these for first aid and emergencies, to tide over until work 
can be found for the head of the family, or until the red tape of chari- 
table investigation can be unwound. After connection is established, 
there should be no giving from the school. 

That leaves only what we may call the "amenities." These include 
holiday trifles, delicacies for the sick, dolls and picture books for 
crippled children, flowers for funerals. These attentions are deeply 
appreciated, and do not pauperize these people any more than they 
pauperize in any walk of life. Yet the sum total of them in a school 
district is too great a tax on a teacher's pocket. But the world is full 



24 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

of loving and giving ; you will easily find clubs or individuals who will 
be glad to keep you in small funds for these purposes.* 

From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. has proved a practical working day. I have 
not found anything to do before nine or any place to stop before five. 
Of course the trouble is to stop at five, but the Home Teacher must 
not be a worn and jaded person. Freshness, cheer, vitality are essential 
attributes. 

You will not only visit but you will be visited in your headquarters 
at the schoolhouse. You will always have a lap full of everybody's 
troubles, and yet you will not be unduly depressed thereby, because you 
will be too busy fitting remedies to woes. 

The field is so new that there is no way of defining its limits with 
exactness as yet. In a general way I would advise you not to do what 
other people or agencies stand ready to undertake. On the other hand, 
you will have to fill in emergencies, and decide later whether or not they 
will eventually belong to you or to another. For my own part, I have 
conveyed about sixty different school children to the Parent-Teachers' 
Clinic, each one from once to a dozen times. These trips were preceded 
by home calls to get permission of the parents, and followed by other 
home calls to convey directions for hygiene and care. I am not at all 
sure that this duty did not belong to the school nurse rather than the 
Home Teacher, but the school nurse did not have time and I gladly 
accepted the opportunity to get in close touch with sixty homes. 

Unless the subjects named in the Home Teacher Law are standardized 
for you, it will be necessary for you to plan out something like a course 
of study — that is, reduce these subjects to their simplest elements and 
then decide upon the order in which these elements shall be presented. 
Generally speaking, let the order depend on what the immigrant woman 
most needs to know for her immediate use and protection. For instance, 
in English, this will mean her contact with the world outside her home — 
stores, the post office, street cars, etc. In sanitation we will begin with 
her worst violations of the laws of health. And so on through the list — 
essentials first. 

She must, however, never be allowed to slide away from English into 
the other lessons perhaps more attractive. No English — then no sew- 
ing, weaving nor cooking, must be the rule in the group work. So far 
as possible all group work, even the manual portions, should be con- 
ducted in English. 

No two districts will ever offer exactly the same problems, and yet in 
some essentials the law and the prophets will be alike for all. 

*Mrs. Chase's first year and a half of work was voluntary, and during this time she 
received ten dollars every month from the Los Angeles Ebell Club to supply the 
sewing materials and incidentals necessary to carrying on her classes. She now 
receives ten dollars a month from the Women's University Club. The Los Angeles 
City Teachers' Club and the Federation of Jewish "Women are helping other home 
teachers. 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 25 

PLAN OF A YEAR'S WORK FOR A HOME TEACHER. 

By Mrs. Amanda Chase. 

The activities of the home teacher fall into these divisions : 
I. Group teaching. 
II. Home visiting. 

III. Local school attendance. 

IV. Special cases and social service. 

I. Course of Study for Group Instruction. 

(a) English. 

Group divided into two classes according to intelligence and 
advancement. 

Advanced class taught with textbook" or typed lessons. I am most 
at home with my own course of lessons published by the State Immigra- 
tion Commission, of which a new edition is in press and can be had free 
by application to the Commission. 

Beginners taught' with same lessons boiled down to simplest elements 
and presented by means of charts. 

In both classes attention to be paid : 

(1) That the oral word precedes the word printed or written. 

(2) That the reading ability does not outrun speaking ability. 

(3) That each new word becomes the actual possession of the pupil. 

(4) That the pupil shapes spoken sentences on the model of the 

sentences in the lessons. 

(5) That much drilling and constant review are given on such 

minimum essentials as salutations, numbers, money, groceries, 
measures and the like. 

(6) That lessons are connected with actual objects and demonstration 

whenever practical. 

(b) Singing. 

Patriotic songs, with preliminary drill on words and meaning. 

Lullabies, with an effort to have them sung at home as well as at 
school. 

Simple songs about pupils' own occupations. Mrs. Ada Patten has 
done some original verses to old tunes which we shall use next year.* 

(c) Patriotism. 

Taught by songs, by talks in the pupils' own language, and by simple 
patriotic exercises in English. 

Also by having pupils understand and participate in the national 
activities to the greatest extent possible. Red Cross, Thrift Stamps 

*See pages 38 and 39. 



26 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

and Liberty Bonds have proved powerful factors in Americanizing our 
foreigners. 

(d) Sanitation. 

Taught by charts and posters, by talks in pupils' own language, by 
simple lessons in English. 

(e) Cooking. 

The following course has been compiled with regard for (1) food con- 
servation, (2) scarcity of ovens in the districts, (3) the constantly 
changing personnel of the class. It is to be repeated with variations 
as many times as the school year permits. 



(1 

(2 
(3 
(4 
(5 
(6 
(7 

(8 

(9 

(10 

(11 

(12 



A potato lesson. 

A green vegetable lesson. 

A soup lesson. 

A meat lesson. 

Rice and cocoa lesson. 

A salad lesson. 

Top-of -stove corn bread (or other bread made with substitute 

flour). 
Baked corn bread (or other bread made with substitute flour). 
Tamale pie, or similar dish. 
A cooked fruit lesson. 
Pudding ( Top-of -stove ) . 
Oatmeal cookies or gingerbread. 



(/) Sewing. 

This subject should always be taught with the aid of models, as many 
of the pupils have no mental standard of a properly made and finished 
garment. 

(1) Everybody make a sewing bag for use at school. 

(2) Everybody make a cook apron and cap for use at school. 
After this, choice to be according to individual need and taste, selected 

from the following models : 

children's clothing. 

Set for young baby, consisting of band, diaper, shirt, petticoat and 
slip. 

Set for one-year-old, consisting of shirt, drawers, petticoat, dress, 
short kimono and nightgown. 

Set for small girl, consisting of waist, drawers, petticoat, dress and 
nightgown. 

Girl's dress and bloomers to match. 

Girl's wool dress made from old materials. 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 



27 



Several styles of girl's dresses. 

Small girl's apron. 

Girl's nightgown. 

Boy's waist, rompers and coverall. 



WOMAN S MODE!.-. 

Pretty apron, colored wash petticoat, plain corset cover, plain night- 
gown, dressing sacque, apron dress and knitting bag. 

HOUSEHOLD MODELS. 

Comforter, curtain, bureau scarf. 

II. Home Visiting. 
a. In average district home visits to be made — 

For general acquaintance and friendliness, inviting to join 
groups, to attend night school, to be present at community center 
events. 

For correlating the group lessons with home practices. 

J). In a limited number of families living below the neighborhood 
standard, detailed instruction to be given in the home itself and record 
made of each visit according to form given below. Visits to be frequent 
and special emphasis laid on one or more of designated points at each 
visit. 

Family Record. 
Name and nationality _ 

Date of visit 





... Number of Family Economic 
.&aaress rooms consists of status 


Floors 









Stove, sink and table. 






Windows 

Ventilation 


- 







Beds 








Matters of food 








Matters of clothing- 








Adults study— English 

Other matters 

Recreation •_ 

















28 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

III. Local School Attendance. 

(a) Working upon unnecessary irregularity, by educating parents to 
importance of attendance, and also the meaning and authority of the 
compulsory education law. 

(&) Working upon tardiness, by finding its cause in the home and 
having it corrected. This has been accomplished in a number of chronic 
cases. 

(c) Bringing in children of new families immediately upon their 
appearance in the district. 

(d) Training parents in the degree of cleanliness required. When 
necessary, taking a child home and showing parents how to get him 
ready for school. 

IV. Special Cases and Social Service. 

(a) To investigate homes of school children as to their fitness. To 
see what can be done to improve conditions, or in extreme cases to report 
such families to child protective agencies. 

(&) When the occasion arises, to make a first-aid connection between 
a family and the various agencies for relief or employment. 

records. 

1. Class book of group attendance. 

2. Class book of home instruction in special families. 

3. Brief daily memorandum for Principal. 



3. "HOME TEACHER WORK IN SAN FRANCISCO." 

By Council of Jewish Women. 

(Excerpts from the Report of Miss Rebecca Jacobs, Chairman Committee of 

Americanization. ) 

Read at Section Meeting of California Teachers' Association, March 20, 1018. 

In the early part of the year 1915, our state legislature passed a bill, 
which was draughted and proposed by the Commission of Immigration 
and Housing, empowering boards of education of this state to employ 
Home Teachers whose duty it should be to work through the homes of 
the pupils. The board of education of the city and county of San 
Francisco was not prepared to install such a teacher in its schools, but 
this Council, realizing that its scope of activity ought to be enlarged, and 
seeing in the Home Teacher an opportunity for doing pioneer work in 
San Francisco, determined, if permitted, to assume the responsibility of 
this feature of social work. Permission was granted the Council to 
employ a Home Teacher, and in January, 1916, she began her work in 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 29 

the John Swett Grammar School, that school having been selected, 
because it is located in a neighborhood thickly populated by foreigners. 

At the beginning, the teacher concerned herself with the children 
only, visiting the homes to make inquiries concerning the absentees. 
Repeated visits established confidence until, by degrees, the mothers 
learned that instead of being one whom they need fear or look upon 
with suspicion, the Home Teacher went to them as a true American 
friend, who was ever ready to help and to advise. 

Slowly, but surely, the teacher became the confidant, and family 
experiences were confided to her. As soon as the wide open door greeted 
her when she went her rounds, she began, wherever it was necessary, 
to work with the mother in the home. 

She explains the value of fresh air and sunshine, the need of proper 
ventilation, sanitation, and the use of disinfectants. She teaches 
hygiene, she gives simple home remedies for slight illnesses, and urges 
calling upon the clinics in the neighborhood for more serious cases. A 
bulletin, giving minute directions for the proper care of young children, 
issued by Mount Zion Hospital in 1917, at the time of the infantile 
paralysis epidemic, was placed in the hands of the Home Teacher and 
did much toward making for more nearly sanitary conditions. 

The teacher shows the importance of being punctual, and the need of 
a clock as a vital part of the machinery of the household ; she explains 
the State Compulsory Education Law, a law almost unknown to the 
parents when she began her work. She explains the Curfew Law, 
impresses upon the parents the importance of having the children at 
home at night, instead of allowing them to roam the streets or visit 
picture shows. She tells about food values, encourages the mothers to 
use more cereals and green vegetables and less meat, and gives simple 
recipes. She tries to impress upon the mother the need of a wholesome 
breakfast of cereals and milk for the children, instead of serving them 
with strong coffee and doughnuts; and tells them how important it is to 
have the mealtime a family reunion. The children are taught to be 
helpful in the home. They are told that as they are a part of the home, 
they must share in its responsibilities. 

The teacher counsels the mother so to order her household and her 
life that her children will be proud of her, show her the respect which 
is her due and make her their confidant and companion ; she helps her 
to give her children a home in which they will be interested and of 
which they will be proud — a home to which they will bring their com- 
panions, instead of going from it to seek them; she is trying to make 
the mother realize that only the right kind of a home can make for the 
right kind of a citizen. The Teacher tells the mother that if she wishes 
to keep her children, she must become a part of the community in which 



30 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

she lives, that she must learn the language and the customs of her new 
home, that she must learn how to adjust herself to her new surroundings, 
and how to get the best for herself and her family out of all that is 
being offered her. 

To help the mother adjust herself, a class has been formed for the 
teaching of civics and English speaking, reading and writing. This 
class meets four afternoons a week, from two to four o 'clock. To make 
the mothers understand that all good things ought to take place in the 
home, the classes are held in the home of one of the members. In the 
beginning, they were held in a living room back of a grocery store. At 
first, all of the members were doing the same kind of work, but as some 
advanced more rapidly than others, two divisions were formed : Class 
"A" consisting of the more advanced pupils, Class "B" composed of 
the more backward pupils and the beginners. Class "A" is now being 
taught how to read the newspaper and the use of the dictionary. Beside 
group teaching, individual instruction is given those mothers who are 
anxious to learn English, but who can not attend classes. Patriotism is 
being fostered by celebrating the national and state holidays. Here, 
again, the home is the place of the celebration. 

Nothing is left undone which can and will implant in the mind of 
the mother the idea that the state, the home and the school must be so 
closely linked that nothing can destroy the chain. On the holidays the 
mothers celebrate with a coffee party, which is followed by a program. 
The house and table are decorated with the red, white and blue and the 
flag is always in evidence. Post cards, commemorative of the day, serve 
as place cards, and each mother is given a small silk flag for a souvenir. 
The story of the day is told and the mothers give the pledge to the flag 
and sing America and The Star Spangled Banner. Each mother has 
been given a card upon which are printed the words of the latter song. 
So that the mothers may be perfectly natural, their friend, the teacher, 
is the hostess, and the mothers are the only guests. Because of this, 
they talk freely, in English, ask questions about the day and about our 
country; thus facts in history and geography and civics are subcon- 
sciously learned. Until this year, the programs were arranged and 
presented by the Home Teacher, now the work is being done by students 
of the San Francisco State Normal School. 

The mothers of the English Class demonstrated their patriotism by 
subscribing a sum of money, which they sent to the "Children of 
America's Army of Relief," one of the organizations that works for 
the starving children across the seas. 

The Division of Immigrant Education directing the "America First" 
Campaign, sent blanks to the Chairman of the Committee of Education 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 31 

and Americanization of the Council of Jewish Women, with the request 
that each recipient of these blanks be asked to pledge herself to have 
one foreigner enroll as a member of the Evening School, the pledges to 
be signed and returned to Washington. Some of these blanks were 
given the Home Teacher, with the request that she try to interest the 
mothers of the English Class in the movement, with the result that all 
of the mothers signed the pledges, which were sent back to Washington, 
and they saw to it that those for whom they had signed, attended night 
school. Mothers have been given lessons in bandaging, talks on First 
Aid and have heard a splendid illustrated lecture on Sanitation, Sun- 
shine, Ventilation, and Flies and their Relations to Tuberculosis and 
other diseases. 

There is no branch of social service work which can do more to give 
the foreigners the ideas of the better American living than does the 
work done by the Home Teacher, and if she takes, as does our Home 
Teacher, to those among whom she works, good will and sympathy, good 
fellowship and friendship, words can not tell the incalculable good she 
can bring to all members of the families which she visits. 



4. TEACHING ENGLISH IN THE MEXICAN CAMP AT 

SHERMAN. 

Report of Mrs. Amy Gardner. 

This school for teaching English to foreign women and children is 
located in the yards of the Pacific Electric Company in Sherman near 
the camp furnished by the company for the employees. There was no 
room large enough for a meeting place, therefore we decided to occupy 
a street car, which the Pacific Electric Company placed at our disposal 
upon a siding close to the Mexican camp. 

In the beginning we visited the homes to invite the women and 
children to come to school. We explained to them our object — to teach 
English and sewing and (.with a subconscious feeling of egotism) any- 
thing the women and children might wish to learn. The class is com- 
posed of twelve women and twenty-eight children ranging in age from 
four to fourteen. There are sixteen boys and twelve girls. We have 
attempted by the use of objects to teach words in ordinary use. When 
we know that the word is understood, we ask the class to find the word 
in their books or on the chart. They sometimes write the new word in 
their blank books. 

We have conversation in English while sewing, teaching the names 
of articles in use, needle, thread, pattern, etc., incorporating such words 
into short sentences. Each woman has made an apron and three young 



32 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

girls have completed dresses for themselves. We have given special 
sewing lessons on Friday mornings. 

The small girls and boys have been busy with mat weaving, paper 
folding, etc. For the older boys, who attended regularly from the 
start, we organized a sloyd class. The lessons are given Tuesdays, 
Thursdays and Fridays. The sloyd class is making flytraps to place 
near each garbage can in the camp. They are also very proud of a toy 
aeroplane which they have completed. The class of boys and one woman 
have half-soled and repaired several pairs of shoes. Lessons have 
begun in basket making, out of the twigs and branches cut from the 
eucalyptus trees near by. The boys are acquiring a knowledge of simple 
drawing and tables of measure, with the practical use of tools. 

The Mexican camp, located in the rear of the station, would not be 
noticed by a causal passer-by. The people in the camp are somewhat 
isolated, living their own life in their own way and knowing little of 
outsiders. The women at one end of the row of houses have scarcely a 
speaking acquaintance with those at the other side of the camp, but they 
are meeting now at the school and we try to have a short period between 
lessons during which they can get better acquainted with each other. 

We have found the Pacific Electric officials deeply interested in the 
success of the school, and we are indebted to Mr. Bates and Mr. Weller, 
camp superintendents, for assistance in many ways. 

We hope to establish a more friendly feeling in the community. 
After several years study of the Immigration Problem, as the writers 
like to term it, I have concluded that there is no Immigration Problem. 
One nationality differs very little from another except in customs 
caused by environment. If the community holds the newcomer at arm 's 
length and treats him as a being from another planet, there can be no 
growth into new customs, but rather a withdrawal into his own language 
and way of living. There are many people in Los Angeles who have 
never attempted to learn the English language, and few of our own 
people care to know why it is so. Miss Baughman said in one of the 
conferences, "Do unto every other human creature, as you would wish 
that person to do unto you, if your places were exchanged. ' ' 



5. REPORT OF MRS. RUTH C. FISH. 

Extracts from daily reports. 

With a class of 10 women I began quilt making. Also taught them 
the names of the things they used, as needle, thread, etc. "Where is 
your thimble?" "Please give me the scissors." 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 33 

The class of women met again and continued the quilt making. I 
reviewed the words they had had, and taught them names of foods, with 
such words as pint, quart, pound, etc. 

We had a group of 30, both men and women, last evening. They 
were graded into classes, and taught new words, with concrete objects, 
as — < < I put bread on the plate. " "I put coffee in the cup. ' ■ 

I went to make calls in the homes. Found a Mexican and a Japanese 
boy quarreling in the street, and took them along for interpreters. 
We did good work. 

Experience in Beginning in Difficult Places. 

When I first visited the neighborhood, the women seemed friendly, 
and disposed to learn, but on my next visit said their men were opposed 
to their having anything to do with us. I sat and talked with them for 
an hour, explaining how it was what we American women would like 
them to do, if w r e went into their country, and could not speak their 
language. They finally brought out some material and asked me if I 
could show them how to cut out a dress. This demonstration established 
a good feeling, and in course of time I found myself welcome in every 
home. 

In the beginning they said they did not care to learn English, but 
during our sewing lessons I would ask them to tell me the words in 
Spanish, and in turn I would tell them the words in English. Finally, 
they would ask for the English words. Two weeks before the close of 
the session I gathered together fifteen women for a real English lesson, 
and before I left they were asking for books. 

Among the women of this camp there was a protest against the study 
of English, and the majority of the houses and children were uncared 
for and filthy. Noting the aversion to English, work was begun by 
teaching sewing. In the course of a few weeks the confidence of most 
of them was gained, and I was able to begin to make suggestions in their 
homes with regard to cleanliness, the bathing of their babies, etc. I 
avoided criticism, but wherever praise could be given I did not spare it, 
which gave them a desire to meet me with clean faces, hands and dresses, 
and in time the women would ask me into their houses, to see how clean 
they had made them. 



6. ALBION SCHOOL, LOS ANGELES. 

Home Teacher work was inaugurated by the D. A. R. in the school at 
Avenue 19, which is a neighborhood school, with a very social-minded 
Principal. The Home Teacher did visiting in the homes, making a card 
catalogue of the families and their histories, and secured for group 



34 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

work 45 women of various nationalities, Italians predominating. Two 
of the regular teachers in the school volunteered to teach them. After 
English drill in two classes, they joined in one for singing. They 
then adjourned to another room, where they were trained in sewing by 
representatives of the D. A. R., who brought material, chiefly clothing 
to be made over. After one year this work was taken over by the Board 
of Education, but members of the D. A. R. continue to take charge of 
the sewing. The success of this school is largely due to the promptness, 
business-like regularity and reliability of these ladies, who have con- 
tinued to make this interest first in their plans, and have faithfully 
kept the days promised to the school free from other engagements. 

The report of the Teacher, Mrs. Ringnalda, follows. She has now a 
class of fifty Sicilian women. 

Mrs. Ringnalda's Report— First Experiences of a Home Teacher. 

The work was new, the field was new, the teacher was new. I found 
myself at first groping and stumbling. There were two points of con- 
tact — the Principal and the people. The Principal was human and 
practical, the people immensely human, and not a bit different from 
others of the species ; and their problems were not a bit bigger, not a 
bit smaller, than those of other folk. The problems in their case were 
made up largely of how to get enough to eat, and how to keep the land- 
lord pacified. The rents are often months in arrears, and a trifle each 
week keeps a leaky roof over an uncomfortable collection of human 
beings. 

In the majority of cases, a little encouragement in the shape of "a 
job for father," and a small grocery order to tide over, did wonders. 

At first there was a great lack of cordiality on the part of .the women 
of the district. Often my knock was not answered. Among the first 
welcomes I received was a visit to the back yard, where three women 
were engaged in washing. I did not try the front door this time, but 
boldly marched to the back, and settling myself on an upturned wine 
barrel, I proceeded to get acquainted under difficulties. My astonished 
hostesses spoke no English, and I knew no Italian. My attempts at 
conversation were a dismal failure, but I succeeded in rousing their 
curiosity to the extent of calling an interpreter, who bluntly inquired — 
"What you want?" I told her I came from the Principal. "Was I a 
doctor? Was I a nurse?" I denied both charges, and told her I came 
to make friends with the mothers of the school children. More neigh- 
bors came, and a council of war was held. I felt myself under fire, but 
stuck to my wine barrel and played peek-a-boo with the baby, until I 
took my leave, after inviting myself to call again. My hostesses, now 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 35 

numbering eight, seemed, to my chagrin, relieved to see me go, but I 
was sure they thought me a harmless creature, who might even prove to 
be a friend. News travels fast in a congested district, and it was not 
many days before I was firmly established as a Home Teacher. 

I found that a word of encouragement here and a little praise there 
helped things along very much. I recall one shack, of two rooms, that 
housed three Mexican families. A small, rusty parlor stove did duty 
as a kitchen range. One dirty bed stood in a corner, heaps of soiled 
clothes were scattered about, and there was a roll of bedding in the 
kitchen. Tables, chairs and dishes were conspicuous by their absence. 
I reported the case to my Principal, and a bed, complete even to pillows, 
was soon forthcoming. By strategy I succeeded in getting the floor 
scrubbed, the new bed in position, and the old one aired. On my next 
visit, I found the owners of the new bed fondling it as if it were a living 
thing. The home-making instinct is there — it only needs a chance to 
develop. These people, like many of their kind, have been tied hard and 
fast by their poverty. There is a chance for the Home Teacher to do 
work that counts. 

A Mothers' Class, which had been organized by the D. A. R., met three 
afternoons in the week, where English was taught for an hour by 
teachers from the school, whose work was a labor of love. The second 
hour of the meeting was devoted to sewing. Garments were made up 
and sold to the women at about cost. Those who could paid cash, and 
the others earned the garment by sewing for the school, an exact account 
being kept. Cast-off clothing played an important part in these busi- 
ness transactions. 

Occasionally a rummage sale changed the order of things. Any one 
who has attended bargain sales at the Broadway stores knows how much 
vigor comes to the surface in the seekers for bargains. The women of 
Avenue 19 are very much like those on Broadway, and two people often 
become attached to one garment with such firmness that the garment 
suffers. 

These dear little mothers, whose chance in the big struggle for a 
living in a new and strange country is such an uphill climb, respond 
very quickly to the touch that is human and kind, and come to look 
upon their Home Teacher as a friend and comrade, in whom they may 
freely confide. 

During the earlier part of the year I found dissension among families 
and close neighbors. These conditions seem to have disappeared, owing 
to the regular and pleasant class meetings. 

This is perhaps the most encouraging result of my work. 



36 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

7. OUTLINE OF THE POLICY OF A HOME TEACHER. 

By Josephine Ringnalda. 
(Reprinted from Los Angeles City Schools Report, 1917.) 

1. Visit the homes in a friendly way, to gain the confidence and 
friendship of the men as well as of the women of the district. 

2. Report to -the principal all important information. 

3. Report cases of sickness and want to the proper sources of relief. 

4. Visit the sick at their homes or at the hospitals, as the case may be. 

5. Visit employment bureaus, industrial plants, and places where 
both skilled and unskilled labor is needed; and make efforts to bring 
about co-operation between employers and night schools. 

6. Get market reports, watch for bargains in cloth, clothing and shoes. 
Show the women when and where to make their purchases. 

7. Hold classes in English, sewing, cooking, mending, shoe repairing, 
etc. 

8. Have excursions, picnics, parties, stereoptican views, with simple 
talks explaining them, and by these means make the school the com- 
munity center of the district. 

9. Keep a record of each family visited, in which shall appear dates 
of visits, number in family, condition of family, condition of home, 
source of income, etc. 

10. Visit officers of the societies for Home Finding and Prevention of 
Cruelty to Children. 

11. Encourage home gardens, and the preserving of fruits and vege- 
tables. 

12. Collect cast-off clothing and discarded furniture, and sell at a 
reasonable figure to the people of district, either for cash or for labor. 



8. REPORT OF MISS JEANNETTA WROTTENBERG. 

My work is with Jewish women — chiefly Russian Jews, with a 
sprinkling of Polish and Hungarian. I divide my time and energy 
among the neighborhoods of three schools, and can not, of course, serve 
any of them adequately. In one I have a class of fifteen women, in 
another a class of fifty, and in the third a class of sixty. Although 
these numbers seem large, they are small in proportion to the families 
in the neighborhood, and I am more than glad that the Home Teacher 
work is to be helped by a Jewish organization, so that the number of 
women reached is likely to be doubled. The opportunity is limited only 
by the attention which can be given. 

These Jewish women are ambitious to learn, and have an exceptional 
readiness to respond to efforts looking toward Americanization, for 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 37 

which they have a natural enthusiasm. Besides Yiddish, they speak a 
little English, which makes it easier to approach them. They do not 
require the ordinary instruction in cooking and sewing, as they are 
usually adept in these, so my attention is given chiefly to hygiene, 
cleanliness and ethics, in addition to the necessary English drill. For 
this I compile sentences on subjects which fit their needs, which they 
read, speak, copy and take from dictation, absorbing with the English 
still more important lessons in sanitation, civics and patriotism. 

I find one of my chief aims must be to seek to restore the natural 
balance in the homes, of which the parents should be the head. It is 
the tragedy of the immigrants that in adjusting themselves to new con- 
ditions, the children are reached and developed first, with resulting 
disintegration in the home, and loss of dignity for the parents— a 
thing greatly cherished by the foreigner. The children may be led to 
honor their parents through appreciation of the institutions and art of 
their native land. And the parents need to be shown that they will earn 
the respect of their children by learning English and becoming Ameri- 
canized. 



9. REPORT OF MRS. FRANCES A. PATTEN. 

Mission Road School, Los Angeles. 

This is a Camp School for mothers, the children attending a grade 
school not far distant. The camp has about 25 families, shifting accord- 
ing to employment. The total enrollment during the year ending 
March, 1918, was 64, with an ordinary attendance of 18 to 20. 

Americanism has been kept as a pivotal thought, and everything is 
said and clone in the American way. 

Several branches of domestic art have been touched, but the quilt 
has received most attention, as quilting can be used to ansAver many 
purposes. As a drawing card it rivals the most interesting continued 
story. It is a valuable aid to number work, and for conversational 
English it opens a wide field. 

Mrs. Patten has been very successful in interesting the women, in 
these days of costly materials, in utilizing quite small scraps sent in by 
friends of the school. They are fitted on a paper pattern, like a 
"crazy quilt," or the kid in an aviator's jacket, and then stitched down. 
The usefulness, and even beauty, of the things thus almost created out 
of nothing, is surprising, and the lesson in thrift and ingenuity invalu- 
able. To do away with any appearance of favoritism in the attractive- 
ness of these pieces, Mrs. Patten makes up at home packages containing 
material for a sewing bag, a small frock or petticoat, or a boudoir cap— 
a favorite article of apparel — with a pattern, all securely wrapped from 
sight 



38 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

Mrs. Patten has also shown the women how to use their own shreds 
and rags by sewing into strips and braiding to make rugs. These were 
greatly treasured and have a distinct value in raising the home standard, 
and cultivating the home-making instinct. 

Because of the frequent changes in the camp, the teaching of English 
has not been broad, the purpose being to concentrate on a few words 
for each period, and have those well learned, giving each woman before 
she leaves the camp a chance to get something definite. The motto of 
the school is — in Spanish — "We do a little, but we do it well." Names 
of goods were taught from posters of the Food Administration. Short 
stories, using familiar words, and suitable for the mothers to tell their 
children, were taught them. 

The most notably successful feature was the songs contrived by Mrs. 
Patten. They were simple rhymes made from the English words the 
women knew, and set to standard American melodies, and intended to be 
sung by the mothers to their children, or as lullabys. The design in 
view in the rhymes was always to connect mother, child, home and 
country. And the aim has been to have each Camp mother as she moves 
on carry with her at least one of these songs, with its national air, 
English words, and American sentiment. 

A few of these songs are appended, as a suggestion to other Home 
Teachers, who can enlarge the list. 

Song 1 — Sunshine and Air. (7 words.) 

Tune, "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean." 
Open the window for sunshine, 

Open the window for air, 
Open the window for sunshine, 

Open for sunshine and air. 

Open, open, 

Open for sunshine and air, 
Open, open, 

Open for sunshine and air. 

Song 2 — Keep the Baby Sweet. (13 words.) 

Tune; "Juanita." 
Wash the little face, 

Wash the hands, the little feet, 
Wash the little dresses, 

Keep the baby sweet. 
Keep the baby clean, 

Keep the baby clean and neat, 
Keep the baby clean, 

Keep the baby sweet. 

Baby, sweet baby, 

So clean, so neat, so sweet, 
Baby, sweet baby, 

Clean, neat and sweet. 






COMMISSION OP IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 39 

Song 3 — Sleep, Baby, Sleep. (25 words.) 

Tune, "Old Folks at Home." 
Good night, good night, my little baby, 

Sleep, sleep for me, 
Good night, good night, my little baby, 

The sun is gone, you see. 

Papa is here, and Mama is near, 

So do not fear. 
O baby, baby, sweet, sweet baby, 

Sleep, sleep, my baby dear. 

Song 4 — Work. (27 words.) 

Tune, "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching." 
We are working every day, 
So our boys and girls can play. 

We are working for our homes and country, too ; 
We like to wash, to sew, to cook, 
We like to write, or read a book, 

We are working, working, working every day. 

Work, work, work, 
We're always working, 

Working for our boys and girls, 
Working for our boys and girls, 
For our homes and country too — 

We are working, working, working every day. 

Song 5 — Come, Come to School. (33 words.) 

Tune, "Come Back to Erin." 
Come, come to day school, 

Or come, come at night, 
Come, learn to read 

And come, learn to write. 
Come, learn to cook, 

And come, learn to sew — 
Come, learn the things 

That all mothers should know. 

Little by little 

You learn every day, 
Little by little 

And try, try again. 
Remember the proverb 

We use in this school is — 
"Hago poco, pero 

Lo hago bien." 



40 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

10. NOTES FROM VARIOUS REPORTS OF HOME TEACHERS. 

"We have taken part in several community entertainments. I spent 
part of one day helping the man in charge of our "War Savings Society 
to prepare a program." 

"A lady from another War Savings Society asked our Glee Club to 
sing for them on their program. The girls made the posters. ' ' 

"The Red Cross gave a dancing party, with about 150 out." 

"The Mothers' Class has had an enrollment during the year of 72, 
attending with varying regularity. One meeting was particularly 
interesting. One of the women had had success in canning without 
sugar, and brought a jar to show. One had made cookies from a Hoover 
recipe, and passed them around to be sampled. Another makes her 
own vinegar, and told how it was done. Best of all was a pattern for 
making over stockings for children, brought by a Spanish woman — ■ 
every one present cut a pattern to take home." 

"The class has adopted a motherless family of children. They have 
made over many garments for them, but wanted the little ones to have 
a few new things, so bought some new goods. One mother has just 
brought me a nice gingham dress she has finished for the little girl. ' ' 

"I found employment for a widow with two children, and later she 
was very proud to tell me she had found the Employment Bureau her- 
self, and had been given work." 

' ' Our cooking class has been turned into a conservation class, teaching 
the use of new foods like peanut butter, and of wheat substitutes."* 

"Some of our women within walking distance of a park had no idea 
of its existence." 

"We found our mothers so foreign in dress and speech that the 
children were ashamed to have their mothers come to the schoolhouse. 
To overcome this a series of parties was given for the mothers, with the 
influence of the school all thrown in their favor. An unexpected result 
was that the mothers enjoyed visiting their children's class rooms more 
than their own parties. When given readers, they eagerly followed the 
lessons with their lips." 

1 ' One of the most Americanizing iniiuences that could be brought into 
the lives of these women would be American laundry facilities. Their 
washing is done in the most primitive and unsanitary way, with great 
waste of time, fuel, and human strength and health. ' ' 

' ' We have a sewing class for Mexican mothers, who come to the school 
bungalow and mend, or make over old garments into new ones or piece 



*The Pasadena Food Conservation Center gives one day a week to food problems of 
the foreign population. The substitution of corn for wheat in the Mexican tortilla — 
their staff of life — seemed at first an impossibility. There is now, however, a corn 
preparation on the market under the name of "Maizarina," of which tortillas can be 
made, and when it is demonstrated to the Mexican women, they are willing to accept 
it. The Food Center is also teaching more use of vegetables, cereals and milk. 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 41 

quilts. At our first meeting we had three women, at the last twenty- 
five. We have music on a Victrola, but no refreshments. American 
mothers come to help, and we have a little money from the P. T. A. for 
incidentals. ' ' 

"One woman said: 'It was worth a thousand dollars to me when I 
signed my name for a mail package which came to me from New York'." 



11. EXCERPT FROM PAPER "THE NEIGHBORHOOD 

SCHOOL."* 

By a Committee of Teachers of Neighborhood Schools. 

A Neighborhood School is one which attempts to meet all the actual 
educational needs of its district. There are at present in Los Angeles 
fourteen recognized neighborhood schools, all of them situated in the 
foreign quarters. Here the people are, on the whole, limited both as to 
means and space, although they are in the main self-supporting. The 
streets which were formerly very dirty and badly paved, now show 
marked improvement, through the work of the schools, co-operating with 
other civic and social agencies. 

None of these districts has adequate provisions for the social life of 
the people — few have provision of any nature. In the hundreds of 
homes represented in these schools, English is seldom spoken, and Amer- 
ican standards are little understood. 

Formerly, partly because many of the mothers worked during the 
day and partly because of the ignorance of some of them, the children 
were thrown almost entirely upon agencies outside the home for direc- 
tion, diversion, medical attention, first aid, supervision of cleanliness 
and apparel, moral training, and even for food itself. More recently 
the schools have been successful in returning to the homes many duties 
which ought naturally to have been assumed there, and are strengthen- 
ing the hold of the home upon both children and adults. There can be 
no stability in a government which is not supported by strong homes. 

It is. however, impossible properly to instruct children who are cold, 
hungry and dirty, and who eighteen hours out of twenty-four are sub- 
jected to influences which neutralize the best efforts of the school. An 
improvement in the physical condition of these children and their 
environment must therefore be the foundation for all other work. 

Many of the homes are so overcrowded and so lacking in bathing 
facilities that the children can not keep clean, and have little chance 
of learning the necessity and pleasure of cleanliness anywhere but in 



*What is known as the "Neighborhood School" is manifestly the best type of school 
for the Home Teacher to work out of, since their aims are identical — to respond, in 
different ways, to the needs of the families of its locality. 



42 A MAXUAL FOR HOME TEACBX: 

the school. Ten of the schools have bathrooms, and : z them are 

able to admit the grown people to their privilei 

Day nurseries have been made necessary by the fact that where the 
flier works, the babies must be cared for by the older children, and 
the work of the class riously interfered with. The nursery cares 

for them while the older children are in school, and the mothers either 
at work or in the Mothers* Classes of the Home Teachers. Because of 
the improved condition of the babies, the nurse] 
the mothers on the wholesome effect of suitable ea: a 

\Vork for moth-:- is lone in connection with many of these schc >ls, 

on civics rood conservation and war activities tfl as English and 

the immediate interests of the home. All the Principals agree that the 

work of the Hon- Teacher — the agency which brings the school into 

h with the family life — has had a marked effect m the standard 

: the homes, and the employment of more of them will be recommended. 



12. X TES FROM MRS. WEYMAN. 

'ting of the Ventura County Federation of Clubs. Mrs. C. ML 
man. Superintendez:: :z the California School for Girls, followed 
an address on the Hcnir Tea :er by one of the Commissioners. A: 

iing of general educational interests she took up the preceding 
paper, and showed the sc :-;>l value : : h work, emphasizing its la: a 
and broader possibili::— She : - gnised the n- sessity f rehabilita 
work, like her own. but felt strongly that it begins at the : : _ aid — 
that it should be prevented by home training. She showed sases such 
as might natural!; red by a Home Teacher. The— ;ases -ome 

founded on fact, are noted below. 

The Home Teacher would gradually help to accomplish in a confi- 
dential and quiet way many of the objects of our Mothers * Clubs, which 
would in social development be a long step beyond the Juvenile Court, 
hown in the following illustration- : 
1. In studying her neighborhood, a Home Teacher finds that a group 
of boys is in the habit of idling and smoking at a certain corner. 
A quiet conference with individual fathers and then with a grou; 
fathers, leads to the fitting up of a small boys 3 lubhouse in the back 
yard of one of them, in which all of these fathers take a keen in 

_ . Home Teacher finds a home where the children are being brought 

up on the street, by reason i the unhappiness of the father and mother. 

due to the father's bad luck and reduced earnings. By effort, the 

•ures for the father a better position, bringing harmony into 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AMD HO" 

the life of the parents, and bringing the children back into the home 
from the si 

3. A Home Teacher finds a young girl growing careless and wayward. 
She counsels privately with the parents, finding that they are incapable 
of teaching the b " and sacredness of sex to their daughter, and 
have neither church connection, nor a wise family physician. The 
Teacher therefore talks with the girl, though well realizing it is a late 
day to begin, and induces the family to m<: tc an entirely different 
part of the city, where it will b r to break from her - 

and incipient habi 

4. A Home Teacher finds dance halls working for evil among a group 
oung people in her district. Encouraging the negative reform i 

shutting such places down where im rly conducted, she dc s not 

stop at that, but d - instructive work. She 1 1 _ -:her a number 

of the parents involved. Weekly parties in the several he: 
sented are started, wh- I and young see more of one ano: 

Bringing a:.. — homes :: m U - rts of places atsdde the 

homes, is an elemental activity of the Horn- er who believes that 

the home is the plac tc .row ideals, and that ideals make chara 

5. Arrests of seh hildren in the distri would after a time be 
referred :er of course to the Home Teacher, and wherever at all 

ould be quietly and confidentially adjusted, either at the 
office of the Teacher in the school building, or at the child's own h 
without the ignominy of a Juvenile Court record, or probation c 
treatment. The pol: Id be urged not fa wait for serious brea 

of the law. but to report beginnings of law. the Home 

Teacher, like a well qualified pro : : ffi ;. would act always in a 
spirit of friendliness to the child and to the family, rather than in a 
rit : tion and punishment. 

6. Wherever practicable, when church relations are found tc exist in 
a latent state, the Home Teacher, without regard to her own sectarian 
prei $, encourages, both in the family and in the local church head. 
the restoration of church habits in the home. This must be done grad- 
ually, and without forcing or intrusion. 

7. The development of the playground system, and of the lai_ 
_hborhood use of the public schools, may al< greatly accelerated 

by the Home Teachers. They will, perhaj - ome the di - :' the 

civic center activities of the average pub! i - 1. They will, of co- 
in that case be obliged to reside near the school, and become part of the 
neighborhood life. 

B. Child labor, and other child protective legislation, will be . _ 
■tied with facts, and largely guided as to what is needed, and what 
is and what is not practical, by the exp^-ririioe of the Home Teacher. 



44 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 

13. SUGGESTIVE PROGRAMS FOR SPECIAL OCCASIONS. 

These have been used in Mothers' Classes, and in foreign schools and 
neighborhoods. 

In one Mothers ' Class, the purpose has been to parallel every holiday 
observance in the school, that the mothers may understand the children's 
talk regarding them, as well as enjoy them and absorb their Americaniz- 
ing influence. ■ 

Thanksgiving. Explain in simplest manner that every year we 
gather our children and friends at a feast, and thank God for all we 
have; that those who can, have turkey at their feast. One Mexican 
family had some turkey from some source, and was very proud of the 
fact. Apples were given the women to take home. 

Christmas. Songs were learned beforehand. A little feast was pro- 
vided, with a tiny spangled tree on the table, which was gay with 
tamales wrapped in colored paper and filled with sweets. 

Lincoln Day. "What great man have you had in Mexico, whom you 
love and honor even though he has been long dead?" "We in America 
do the same — this is one of our greatest men. ' ' Teacher shows Lincoln 's 
picture, which remains on the wall.* 

Flag Day, with a little flag for each woman 's hair, and Mothers ' Day, 
with carnations, and even Valentine Day, explained as being for the 
young folks — all are observed. Easter Monday the women made a 
little garden on the table, each concealing a nest for eggs. And May 
Day meant a picnic in the park — an unheard of excursion, which it 
took real courage for these shut-in mothers to undertake. 

The Mexican holidays are also noticed, with an American adaptation. 

In a school which has been accepted as the social center of the neigh- 
borhood, all the patriotic efforts gather under its roof. It is open every 
day for Red Cross sewing, done chiefly by Mexican women, and there 
is a regular Auxiliary of the Italian Red Cross. A group of young 
foreign women is sewing at night for the Belgian children. One Sun- 
day the school house was open to the Syrians for a rally, where they 
sold Liberty Bonds. 

One evening a gathering honored the foreign mothers of sons in 
service. Another there was a Thrift Stamp parade, where the repre- 
sentatives of all departments of war work marched through the streets, 
returning to the schoolhouse, where stamps were sold amid great enthu- 
siasm. A grand Bazaar of Nations was given one evening, with the 
grounds canvassed in (a gift from the Principal), decorated and illumi- 
nated, with music for dancing. Each nationality — Syrian, Mexican, 
Chinese, etc. — had a booth for refreshments, the receipts going to the 
Red Cross. The Syrian coffee houses in the vicinity closed their doors 
for the evening that the receipts might be the larger. 



*There are three lesssons on Lincoln in the "Primer for Foreign-speaking Women," 
copies of which may be had free on application to the Commission of Immigration and 
Housing. 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 45 

Another Red Cross benefit was given by the Mexicans — an Aztec 
play, written, costumed and acted entirely by themselves, and his- 
torically and traditionally correct. It was a dignified performance, 
with an audience of several hundred. 

It is in occasions such as these that the Home Teacher leads her 
mothers to have a part. 

One Home Teacher varies her work by an afternoon of simple games — 
like Musical Chairs or D.onkey Tails — which the women enjoy like 
children. Or on a Friday afternoon each teacher in the building will 
furnish one number for their entertainment — a pretty or amusing 
exercise or motion song which has been already used in her own room. 
This causes very little trouble to any one, and the mothers enjoy it very 
much. 

On a May Day there was a procession with flower decorated baby 
buggies, and on one occasion a patriotic parade. The Red Cross, the 
Red Star, the gardeners, the salvage and ambulance departments, were 
all dvAy represented, marched through the whole region, and stopped at 
each block to sing patriotic songs. 

This school joined with two others to welcome the delegation of 
teachers sent to this country by the Japanese Government. There were 
speeches by the dignitaries, and songs by the children, a dumb-bell 
drill, dances by the kindergarten babies, and the crowning feature 
was a play, "The First Thanksgiving," with John Alden and Priscilla 
complete, enacted by Mexican and Japanese children. Surely, Ameri- 
canization in some localities is proceeding swiftly ! 

COMMUNITY CARNIVAL. 

Pageant of the Children of Columbia. 

Tickets 5 Cents. 



Overture — Patriotic Airs — School Orchestra. 
Tableau — Columbia Receives the Gifts of Her Children. 

1. Indian Song. 
Aztec Dance. 

2. Russian Folk Songs and Dance. 

3. Swedish Weaving Dance. 
Scotch Highland Fling. 
English Ribbon Dance. 

4. Irish Jig. 

French Vineyard Dance. 

5. Syrian Folk Dance. 

6. Italian Tarentella. 
Italian National Hymn. 

7. Symbolic Japanese Dance. 

Frolic Games — Japanese Kindergarten. 

8. Spanish Songs. 

9. Interpretive Dance — "Spirit of Youth in America." 

10. Minstrelsy of the South. 

11. "Out West"— Glee Club. 

12. "Star-Spangled Banner." 



46 A MANUAL FOR HOME TEACHERS. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING ENGLISH. 

£ Spoken and interpreted to a little social gathering of Italian women, by Mrs. Chase.] 

I have been asked to speak to you about the importance of learning English. 
It is indeed very important. For you, English is a key. You have in Italy a 
wonderful civilization— you have books and plays and pictures. Now that you are 
here you want to know our civilization in addition to your own. You want to 
understand our books, our plays, our pictures, our government, all our institutions. 
You can not do this without knowing English. 

In the second place, English is another kind of a key for you. It is a key to 
American friendship. People can not be friends unless they know one another. 
They can not know one another unless they speak the same language. If we 
Americans had gone to live in Italy, you would have the right to say that unless 
we learned Italian we would always be strangers to you. 

Now it is you who have come to live in our country. So it is for you to learn 
English, in order that we may know you and appreciate you and like you. You 
have come to our house to be part of our family — so you should learn the language 
of our house, which is English. 



14. LIST OF SOCIAL AGENCIES WHICH MAY BE CONSULTED BY 

THE HOME TEACHER. 

1. City Nurse. 

2. School Nurse. 

3. Charities Visitor. 

4. Housing Inspector. 

5. Probation Officer. 

6. Schools, Public and Private. 

7. Attendance Officer. 

8. Day Nurseries. 

9. Playgrounds. 

10. Settlements. 

11. Missions. 

12. Priests and Clergymen. 

13. Employers, in Camps and Factories. 

14. Libraries. 

15. Editors. 

16. Consuls. 

17. Commission of Immigration and Housing. 



COMMISSION OF IMMIGRATION AND HOUSING. 47 



THE HOME TEACHER ACT. 
CHAPTER 37. 

[Statutes of California, 1915.] 

Section 1. A new section is hereby added to the Political Code, to 
be numbered section sixteen hundred seventeen b, and to read as 
follows : 

1617b. Boards of school trustees or city boards of education of any 
school district, may employ teachers to be known as "home teachers," 
not exceeding one such home teacher for every five hundred units of 
average daily attendance in the common schools of said district as 
shown by the report of the county superintendent of schools for the 
next preceding school year. It shall be the duty of the home teachers 
to work in the homes of the pupils, instructing children and adults in 
matters relating to school attendance and preparation therefor; also 
in sanitation, in the English language, in household duties such as 
purchase, preparation and use of food and of clothing and in the 
fundamental principles of the American system of government and 
the rights and duties of citizenship. The qualifications of such 
teachers shall be a regular kindergarten primary, elementary or sec- 
ondary certificate to teach in the schools of California and special 
fitness to perform the duties of a home teacher; provided, that the 
salaries of such teachers shall be paid from the city or district special 
school funds. 



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